From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wet work is primarily a euphemism for murder or assassination by governmental agencies that came into use during the Cold War. Today, it has come to refer to a much broader range of government-sponsored covert actions, such as sabotage, espionage, and demolitions operations. It is most popularly attributed to the KGB and their broad euphemism for such activities, “mokrie dela” (wet job). There have been others however, who attribute it to Mossad, CIA, or MI5.
The phrase “wet work” denotes the concept that the spilling of blood makes one’s hands wet. It originated in the NKVD and its successors, MGB and KGB.
Sometimes the term “wet boy” or “washer” is given to an agent involved in such work.
This page has been transwikied to Wiktionary.
Because this article has content useful to Wikipedia's sister project Wiktionary, it has been copied to there, and its dictionary counterpart can be found at either Wiktionary:Transwiki:Wet work or Wiktionary:Wet work. It should no longer appear in Category:Copy to Wiktionary and should not be re-added there.
Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and if this article cannot be expanded beyond a dictionary definition, it should be tagged for deletion. If it can be expanded into an article, please do so and remove this template.
Note that {{vocab-stub}} is deprecated. If {{vocab-stub}} was removed when this article was transwikied, and the article is deemed encyclopedic, there should be a more suitable category for it.
|
